First Steam Loco on Springdale Miniature Railway

Another Denmark resident, Rob Otway, brought over his 0-4-0 steam loco for a run.  The loco, 7 1/4" gauge of course, is a scaled up version of a "Juliet" loco originally designed for 3 1/2" gauge.  Rob and two other members of the Northern Districts Model Engineering Society built three similar locos at the same time, with completion around 2016.

As the Springdale Miniature Railway doesn't have any specific unloading facilities, Rob brought an existing ramp to allow the loco to be gently rolled down from his trailer onto the track.

After an initial run light engine in the clockwise direction, Rob decided the railway's grades would be better running anti-clockwise, so we we turned the loco by running onto an old sheet metal sign laid on one of the level crossings and swivelling it around by hand.  The three available wagons owned by Springdale Miniature Railway provided a decent load especially on the grades of up to 3%.

The video tells the story...

To provide a method of safeworking with two operating locomotives, a token or staff system was implemented so that only one loco was permitted onto the main line at any time. 

Due to fire restrictions in the Denmark shire over the summer, a repeat of the steam run won't be possible for many months.  Even in October, the trains carried pressure sprayers filled with water to take care of any minor outbreaks, which luckily didn't eventuate.

Springdale Station Building

AI interpretation of original Station at Springdale (Chat GPT)

In April 2023, before any track arrived, I started building a one-third scale model of the small station building which once existed at the real Springdale, on the shore of Wilson Inlet.

The are very few photos of the original station.  A photo similar to that shown above turned up on Facebook, but it was of poor quality as it was a photo of an image on a computer screen taken at an angle and the perspective was distorted.  As an experiment, I used ChatGPT to correct the distortion and remove unwanted parts of the image, to produce the above photo.

The Springdale station building was a common design used by Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) known as a Portable Shelter Shed.  The shelters were made in flat-pack form so they could be easily moved by train to wherever they were needed.

I did most of the woodwork in Perth and, true to the prototype, transported the wall panels to Denmark for final assembly and installation.  I cut the wall frames and simulated weatherboards from treated pine to the scale dimensions based on an original WAGR plan.

Wall frames taking shape.

Preparations for the curved roof.

The curved corrugated iron roof was a stumbling block for a while.  Sheets of "mini-orb" find corrugated iron were readily available with the corrugations matching the one-third scale of the building.

Initial trials with rollers intended for curving flat metal weren't successful as they tended to flatten the corrugations.  Extensive enquiries failed to find a commercial supplier able to curve the small corrugated iron sheets.

Finally, I tried cutting the sheets into narrower strips, approximating the width of scale size sheets, and gently standing on the sheet while it was supported by two blocks of wood.  Moving the sheet along about 100 mm at a time and repeating the process produced the desired curve.  It was hard to get an even curve right to the ends, but the sheets were too long anyway so I trimmed the excess.

Curving a strip of Mini-Orb.

Starting to make some progress curving the roof.

Attaching the roof after the walls had been painted.

The finished station in position next to the railway.